A method and a culture

Some of the Science Bloggers are coming up with taxonomies of biologists, physicists and anthropologists and chemists. This is great, and I don't have anything to add except that it is always important to remember that science the method is irrelevant without the science the culture. It itself is embedded within the broader culture, and as books like The Lunar Men show science's growth and efflorescence are tied together with currents that sweep through the broad expanse of a society. Attempts at "modernization" of a "traditional" culture via science as in the 19th century Egypt of Muhammad Ali failed because science is likely less an engine of "modernity" than a product of it.

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